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After Trump attacks New York Times, Giuliani tells paper Mueller will be done by September


China aims to land on dark side of moon via launch of 'Magpie Bridge' satellite

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Relay station will eventually let teams on the ground talk to a lunar probe that China plans to launch this year in world-first mission

China is one step closer to being the first country to land on the dark side of the moon.

At 5.28am on Monday, the Queqiao relay satellite was launched from Sichuan province, according to Chinese state media. With Queqiao in place, China will be able to send a lunar probe to the side of the moon that never faces the Earth. No space program has ever reached that part of the lunar surface because of communications difficulties.

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Germany to roll out mass holding centres for asylum seekers

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‘Anchor’ camps will undermine country’s reputation for being welcoming, say critics

Mass holding centres that Germany’s interior ministry wants to roll out across the country will stoke social tension between locals and migrants and undermine the welcoming image the country has gained in the eyes of the world, aid organisations have said.

So-called anchor centres – an acronym for arrival, decision, return – are designed to speed up deportations of unsuccessful asylum seekers, by containing large groups of people and the authorities who rule on their claims inside the same holding facility.

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EU blocking cities' efforts to curb Airbnb, say campaigners

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Commission is hypnotised by ‘sharing economy’ and not seeing its downside, says researcher

The explosive rise of short-stay Airbnb holiday rentals may be shutting locals out of housing and changing neighbourhoods across Europe, but cities’ efforts to halt it are being stymied by EU policies to promote the “sharing economy”, campaigners say.

“It’s pretty clear,” said Kenneth Haar, author of UnfairBnB, a study published this month by the Brussels-based campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory. “Airbnb is under a lot of pressure locally across Europe, and they’re trying to use the top-down power of the EU institutions to fight back.”

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Venezuela elections: Nicolás Maduro wins second term

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Main rivals both declare poll, which was boycotted by the opposition, illegitimate due to alleged widespread irregularities

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has shrugged off international condemnation and allegations of vote buying and electoral fraud to claim a second six-year term at the helm of his crisis-stricken nation.

Addressing crowds of supporters outside the presidential palace in Caracas on Sunday night, Maduro hailed the “impeccable electoral process” that had returned him to power with 67.7% of the vote.

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Sanja Matsuri festival – Yakuza day in pictures

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Sanja Matsuri festival is a celebration of the three legendary founders of Sensoji Temple in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighbourhood, with nearly two million people visiting during the three-day event.

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Hillary Clinton shows off Russian hat in jab at Donald Trump – video

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Hillary Clinton takes swipe at the US president over alleged Russian election interference during a graduation speech at Yale university. She made the speech on a day that students traditionally wear 'over the top hats'

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Toxic clouds rise up as lava from Kilauea volcano hits sea – video


Is Roman Abramovich's rule at Chelsea nearing its end?

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Russian oligarch has become a sporadic visitor to the club into which he has poured more than £1bn since 2003

Roman Abramovich’s absence as Chelsea defeated Manchester United to claim the FA Cup, and the 15th major trophy of his ownership, is now explained by the delay in granting his renewal application for an investor’s visa. Yet, at the time, his non-appearance at Wembley hardly set the alarm bells ringing.

The oligarch has become a sporadic visitor to the club into which he has poured more than £1bn since acquiring it in 2003, missing some significant home games en route and never travelling to away fixtures. While he had attended his side’s loss to Arsenal in last season’s FA Cup final and was regularly seen at Stamford Bridge in the first half of this season, the 51-year-old was last in attendance in his box in the middle tier of the West Stand for the victory over Crystal Palace in March.

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Is Abramovich at last paying the price for being too close to Putin?

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Chelsea’s owner is vulnerable to UK retaliation because of his proximity to Russian president

There is a compelling, two-word explanation for why Roman Abramovich is apparently having difficulties renewing his British visa: Vladimir Putin.

According to reports from Moscow, Abramovich was unable to watch his Chelsea team’s 1-0 victory over Manchester United in Saturday’s FA Cup final at Wembley because his investor’s visa expired last month. His private Boeing jet has not been back to the UK since 1 April.

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North Korea's nuclear test site: is blowing up Punggye-ri just for show?

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North Korea has invited a handful of journalists to watch as it dismantles its only known nuclear test site, but experts warn the move is purely symbolic

This week North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will shut the nation’s only known nuclear test site ahead of an expected meeting with Donald Trump on 12 June. However, experts have warned that the move is more symbolic than practical. Here is all you need to know about the dismantling of Punggye-ri.

Related: Dismantling of North Korea nuclear site 'well under way', satellite images show

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Central African leaders tweak democracy to cement power

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Burundi president’s power grab is latest by a number of regional leaders to have raised term limits or bolstered their powers

Voters in Burundi have backed wide-ranging constitutional changes that will reinforce the power of the president, Pierre Nkurunziza, potentially allowing him to rule for up to 14 more years after his current term expires in 2020.

The measures were approved by 75% of voters, with 17% opposed, on a reported turnout of 98%.

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Adventure tourists: when you visit remote tribes, learn the art of sharing | Elliott Oakley

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Living with Guyana’s Wai Wai taught me that building relationships – and earning money – is vital for indigenous people to get access to healthcare and education

Every night during a 600-mile kayak trip, adventurer Pip Stewart asked her team members for their highlight of the day. In an Instagram post, she recounted how one, a Wai Wai guide named Romel, would give the same response each day: “It was good. I enjoyed the paddling. We had good food.”

For the trip – which was the first ever descent of the Essequibo river in Guyana – Stewart and fellow adventurers Laura Bingham and Ness Knight recruited their guides from a village I know. As an anthropologist working with the Wai Wai, an indigenous people in the rainforest villages in Guyana and Brazil, I was struck by Stewart’s account. She observed that Romel and the Wai Wai “are better at accepting and appreciating what is”. Her post led me back to a question related to my own research: what do indigenous guides get out of adventure tourism?

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Malaria rates soar in Venezuela – a nation that had nearly wiped it out

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Shocking reversal for country once lauded for nearly wiping out the disease, reflecting wider problems in failing healthcare system

Venezuela is facing an escalating malaria crisis, even as the infection rates have continued to decline across most of the rest of the planet.

The situation is a shocking reversal in a country that was once seen as a flag bearer for global malaria eradication. Once the Americas’ most malaria-infected country, the disease was almost wiped out between the 1960s and the 1980s.

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Further arrests of Saudi women's rights activists in escalating crackdown

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Ten leading campaigners reportedly held as media denounce women as ‘traitors’ for supporting end to ban on female drivers

At least 10 prominent Saudi activists, mostly women’s rights campaigners, have now been reported to have been arrested in what appears to be an escalating clampdown ahead of the much-vaunted lifting of the prohibition on women driving in the kingdom on 24 June.

The arrests, with more feared by human rights campaigners, come amid a high-profile campaign in Saudi media outlets and on social media denouncing the women as “traitors”.

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Untouchable no more: the Dalit bridegroom rejecting class prejudice | Amrit Dhillon

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When a student from India’s lowest caste proposed to take his marriage procession past the homes of well-to-do Hindus, uproar ensued. Yet he is now poised for a significant victory

The dusty, nondescript road has long been a no-go area, on pain of death, for bridegrooms from the Dalit caste and their wedding processions.

In July, however, on a date yet to be fixed, Sanjay Kumar Jadav, 27, will lead his parade of male relatives – called the “baraat” – down the road in Nizampur village. The group will pass the houses of upper caste Hindus who fear they will be “tainted” by his passing, to where his fiancee Sheetal lives. There, the couple will be married.

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Labor alleges 'secret deal' with One Nation over tax cuts – politics live

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Coalition party room debates live export bill and Liddell power station. All the day’s events, live

Speaking of prime ministers and pubs, a reader has just pointed me to this story of their mum, Quentin O’Keefe talking about the time she made Gough Whitlam wait in line for a beer on budget night for the Museum of Australian Democracy.

The recording is delightful, but for those heading home on public transport or unable to listen, here is the transcript:

I found myself working in the members bar on Budget Night. It was under … It was Gough Whitlam’s government budget. I arrived, probably at 7 that night. I just walked in and found my way to the bar, and was ready to… The people that worked there just said to me it was going to be very busy. Once they finished the speech in the House, they’d be all back for a drink.

Suddenly, the speech was over about ten-to-eight, and in they came. There were hundreds of people there in front of us, so we just got busy serving drinks. It was in the course of that, that a man near the front of the bar said to me, “The prime minister should have a drink.” I looked up because… You’re so busy doing what you’re doing, you’re not even looking at people really. I looked up, and about five or six people back from the bar was Gough Whitlam.

Finance minister Mathias Cormann and Kimberley Kitching have been locked in a stoush about the incident at the Carindale Hotel in which a man allegedly abused the prime minister when he got served first.

The man, known as Bluey, appeared on the Kyle and Jackie-o show. Kitching reads out a transcript from the show, where Bluey said he was in line for about five minutes at his local and “finally got to be served and the PM just pushed in”. Bluey made the point everyone is equal in the pub, doesn’t matter who you are.

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Boris Johnson: Labour refusing to face reality over Venezuela regime

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Foreign secretary says party’s refusal to condemn President Maduro is ‘beyond satire’

Boris Johnson, the UK foreign secretary, has sought to turn the crisis in Venezuela to the Conservatives’ political advantage, accusing the Labour leadership of a “refusal to face reality” over the nature of the regime in Caracas.

Nicolás Maduro, who has overseen rocketing unemployment and hyperinflation, was re-elected president on Sunday after a poll widely condemned by the international community as unfair.

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Trump backer who owned 'inhumane' housing picked to be Belgium envoy

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Ron Gidwitz, who helped fund president’s campaign, faces court case over Illinois project condemned by Obama and others

A major financial backer of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, who once owned a housing estate in which low-income tenants were said to endure “inhumane” living standards, has been nominated as the US ambassador to Belgium.

Ron Gidwitz, a 73-year-old businessman from Chicago gave Trump and other Republicans $700,000 in 2016, and acted as the presidential candidate’s campaign finance chair in Illinois. He will now undergo a month in a US state department “ambassadorial school” before making the move to Brussels.

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How to topple a dictator: the rebel plot that freed the Gambia

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After 22 years, Yahya Jammeh seemed unassailable. His brutal and reckless rule was finally ended by a small but courageous resistance

On Saturday 13 August 2016, six bodyguards from the protection detail of the Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, squeezed into a rental car and drove to the sprawling coastal town of Serekunda. They stopped in Senegambia, the capital’s famous party street, where music blares from bars and white tourists walk around in flip-flops hand-in-hand with young lovers. The men drank some juice and nibbled at some food as they awaited nightfall.

At 1am, when they considered it was safe to move, they got back in the car and drove towards the headquarters of Jammeh’s ruling party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC). They stopped a little distance from the building and peered through the darkness. The building seemed empty. After circling it twice they parked the car 300 metres away. There was only one guard, in a small shed close to the entrance.

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